


Decadence

by axona



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Late Night Writing, Pre-Stanford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 17:27:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4445348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axona/pseuds/axona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of all the words Sam had ever told Dean, decadence had never held more meaning than in that moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decadence

**Author's Note:**

> So it's nearly 5am and I am in a horribly sad, feelsy mood. So what do I do? Decide to kick aside the good, full story I'm working on as my introduction to AO3 and post this piece of rambling creativity instead. What a smart decision.

It’s something decadent.

The word rolls off the tongue like suicide and whiskey, deep and dark and dangerous in every curve and lilt of pronunciation. _Decadent._ Words he’s learned from Sam, words he’s kept like folded paper cranes in the spaces between his ribs. A home for everything Sam has ever given him, a home to replace the one Dean had carried him out of so long ago.

Laughter rolls through his head like summer thunder, like July fireworks and the Impala’s engine rumbling through the night. _“Your pie, De!”_ The kid had always been too smart. He thrived on the echo of age, of historians and authors, the slip slide of truth and memorization and knowledge. Words. Multitudes in the English language, millions more once Sam had discovered the meaning behind those exorcisms, the doors it opened. And all Dean could do was cling to his voracious vocabulary, folding each word like a slip of paper. Another crane, another piece in the puzzle of his ribcage. A flock of memories, compiled together into edges and folds of _Sam._

Dean remembered decadent. Remembered Sam’s childish, gap-toothed explanation. The almighty superior roll of his eyes, the listless stabbing of his fork into the pie that Dean would soon cajole out of his hands. He remembered that word of all others that faded into yellowed pages, weeping the loss of their existence. Sixteen. Because it had rolled off his tongue, less like suicide and whiskey and more like tart apples and gun powder. Familiar, as if the word was meant for him. For Sam had only told him a singular meaning, when to the word there were two. Two - that fit Dean like old, worn jeans and broken in combat boots.

Luxury, indulgence, amplitude. _Pie._ Sam had always been an ironically sassy child. Dean blamed himself a little bit for it.

But beneath that childish ardor there was something darker lurking, something that slid its hands around Dean’s throat like a lover but which clenched like vice and venom. A sweet, sordid death.

_Decay. Deterioration._

They fit hand in hand, and he falls into them with faith he doesn’t feel. He knows they won’t catch him, knows that at the bottom of this ravine there is no salvation.

Words swim up at him from a simple page, crisp and pristine, clearly cared for even in their ramshackle lives. He doesn’t know if it’s from the tears gathering on the cusp of his lids or the shock, the sensation of falling that swoops in his gut and makes him clench up until he aches.

_Sam had always loved words._

Dean had never understood the darkness of the word decadence. But his pain in that moment is exquisite, and the paper flutters to the floor between his boots as his arms come to embrace his midsection. As if it will somehow chase away the roiling storm inside him, as raindrops fall from his eyes and earthquakes shatter in his chest like wracking sobs. A storm weathered by one. Always by one. Fooled by the mirage of loyalty and love, believing there had been another beside him in this battle. When all alone this was his destiny, his fate - to drown in that sweet, stabbing decadence of loss and betrayal. How long had he treaded this path alone? How long had it been, that he’d been going on unaware of the fact that if he fell, hands would no longer catch him?

The air is dry; it scratches the insides of his throat. Memories of cheap comforters and rasping sheets, the squeal of bedsprings and the uncomfortable shifting of a body an arm’s length away. Never silence, always the familiarity of breath in the other bed. His body quakes and he suffers. _Decadent._ Because surely there is no greater magnitude, no larger unit of measurement than the pain he feels in that moment. But _oh_ it’s so sweet, coated and rolled in reluctant pride. Love. And he drowns in it, lets it consume him as he crumples sideways onto the bed, noise like a wounded creature dull in his ears where it is sharp in others. A piece of him removed entirely, but with a raw fervor that leaves him shredded at the edges where his soulmate used to be.

His pain is decadent. He indulges in it, stuffs himself full of it even as he crumbles, fraying and deteriorating beneath the weight of it all.

 

Sam had always loved words.

 

_Congratulations! You have been accepted into Stanford University!_

 


End file.
